Pan

I laid the cold petals to your throat, sueded soft infancy in their rose red, you rose not, still and simple, you were sun bleached linen never worn on a wedding day
My fingertip pushed the petals over intermittent raindrops, sailing them into sigils that wreathed your neck, sheltering the scar, punctured the day I gave you breath through a Never bird bone: the wind blew through you and a child gasped, cried “I want to go home”
“To go home to my mother’s womb, to a warm embrace of embryonic fluid, rib cage clamor, and the intrinsic knowledge that I’ll never know my own soul as well as when I was in utero, building my physical self”
“To a home on the opposite side of laughter, where devils are born at the last syllable struggled from the tongue of a dying grown one, where the merriment births sin of rhythms, sin of tastes”
I placed a final kiss in the palm of your hand, the crown scratched with a flower of life, and where a finger’s warmth would flood, I tucked added thyme
I bent to your ear, a worn acorn button brushing against you, as I whispered, “Time forever favors the young”
I set you free, free of Earth and Never days and nights, free from the pull of stars and tomorrows
I closed my eyes, as happy thoughts seemed few and far between, as water rung bells sounded your welcome

E.A. O'Connell